Falmouth’s Victory: Noisy Community Destroying Wind Turbines to Be Demolished

Back in November 2013, we reported on the orders made by a Court in Falmouth, Massachusetts that pulled to a halt the operation of a couple of Vestas V82s that have been driving townspeople nuts, since they kicked into gear almost 7 years ago (see our post here).

We’ve also reported on Barry Funfar, a former Marine whose own country has forsaken him and his family, by aiding and abetting the local wind power outfit to ride roughshod over the rules; and decent Americans, like Barry (see our post here).

And now it seems the townsfolk can declare final and total victory, as dynamite charges are laid and bulldozers are called in to demolish the source of so much utterly unnecessary misery and suffering.

Two deeply unpopular 400-foot-tall town-owned wind turbines on Cape Cod are coming down, or at least that’s what town officials are clearing the way to see happen.

The first turbine, Wind 1, turned off in 2015 due to lack of a special permit, is legally dormant by the letter of the town’s wind energy bylaw and should be pulled down says a nearby resident’s written request to the building inspector, which is being heeded by town officials. The bylaw says wind turbines dormant for 12 months are considered abandoned and can be removed.

According to The Cape Cod Times, Falmouth officials now have until May 31 to come up with a plan to bring down the structure.

Erected at the town’s wastewater treatment facility on Blacksmith Shop Road in 2010 and 2012, respectively, the turbines elicited immediate and continued backlash from neighbors, who said their property values were plummeting and claimed to be suffering health issues from living near the structures.

The second turbine was shut off in June, and will face a similar fate once a year of dormancy is up, according to The Times.

Ill health effects in humans caused by proximity to large-sized wind turbines have yet to be scientifically confirmed, but sufferers complain of anxiety, headaches, depression, poor sleep, annoyance and other symptoms, which they say are caused by vibrations and noise coming off the huge machines.

The state Department of Environmental Protection studied the issue of noise coming from the turbines in 2012, releasing a report which concluded nearby residents were experiencing elevated noise levels and recommending the project be shut down.

The Falmouth project, one of the first of its kind in the nation, opened many people’s eyes around the country to the scope and nature of wind turbine opposition among people who live very close by, and posed an interesting question to those involved in alternative energy public policy.Masslive

Barry Funfar: his twin tormentors to be destroyed once & for all.

Phil Demers reckons that “Ill health effects in humans caused by proximity to large-sized wind turbines have yet to be scientifically confirmed”.

The long-suffering folk from Falmouth, like Barry Funfar – and the thousands more like them suffering the same kind of experiences around the globe – aren’t crazy and they aren’t imagining things. Precisely the same kind of evidence from long-suffering wind farm neighbours was presented by the Waubra Foundation to Australia’s Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT).

The AAT held that the “noise annoyance” caused by wind turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound “is a plausible pathway to disease” based on the “established association between noise annoyance and some diseases, including hypertension and cardiovascular disease, possibly mediated in part by disturbed sleep and/or psychological stress/distress.” The AAT also slammed wind turbine noise standards as irrelevant and, therefore, totally unfit for purpose: Australian Court Finds Wind Turbine Noise Exposure a ‘Pathway to Disease’: Waubra Foundation Vindicated

What this case proves is that the law works. All it takes is communities with the temerity to use it.

Comments

what about noise generated by a flight lane carrying 84000 planes per annum at 2300 feet above sea level above my home 16 kms from pearson international airport in toronto, canada. this lane is used from 6am to 1.30am (19 1/2 hours per day). federal government refuse to move lane to lake ontario (quite feasible) as it would be 2kms longer so it continues to fly for the last 6 years over the homes of 400,000 persons in midtown toronto.
this lane will carry double by 2025.alan pearson

What about it? In your case, there is no aircraft noise from 1.30am to 6am, when most people are trying sleep. Wind turbines run all night, with no curfew. We imagine you were aware your home was under a flight path when you bought it? Wind farms are built into very quiet rural environments, where people paid for peace and quiet, a trade off for living remotely. No sane person would buy a home within 5km of turbines, and yet they’re placed within 500m of homes in Ontario. And plenty in that situation have abandoned what are now worthless, unihabitable homes.

Whilst I sympathise with anyone who has to live under a flight path, you cannot compare this to a wind facility. They are two completely different industrial sources of noise.

For a start the wind turbine blades are in many cases longer than the wings of an Airbus A380, the worlds largest passenger plane. It has a wing span of 80 metres. Now imagine an A380 flying over your house around 50 times per minute. And that is just the sound coming from one wind turbine. Multiply that, for example, by 140 wind turbines as is the case with the AGL Macarthur wind facility in Victoria. Each turbine has 55 metre blades giving a diameter of 110 metres. 110 metres from a Vestas V112 wind turbine compared to 80 metres from the worlds largest passenger jet. Now perhaps you can begin to understand why they are different. These wind turbines can be going for 24hrs a day as STT have stated.

The A380 also happens to be one of the quietest aircraft in the sky. And as aircraft designers use higher bypass engines, noise levels are coming down. If you were for example to witness Concorde taking off followed by an Airbus A380, you would see and hear the difference straight away. Concorde also used to produce the sonic boom over West England on approach to Heathrow. I have witnessed this myself. There were two distinct booms and you could often look to the sky and see the characteristic outlines of Concorde passing overhead at around 20,000 feet. This is now history of course, noise being one of the main reasons Concorde no longer flies.

Many airports have night curfews which does appear to make a difference. However Melbourne does not surprisingly. But different arrival and departure routes come into force as well as other noise conditions.

As housing developments approach the airport, it seems that it is only a matter of time before a night time curfew does come into force. Heathrow has a night curfew as does Sydney. I do not see why Melbourne Tullamarine should be any different.

The point is though is that these are both industrial sources of noise and they both need to be challenged on the grounds of noise and health. Why should one party suffer whilst another does not?

They didn’t build an international airport at Cape Bridgewater where I am writing from. Or a coal mine. They built a wind farm. And people have had to leave their homes because of it.

Someone has to be held to account.

As for aircraft noise. This is also an area that I keep an eye on.

Bristol International is one such airport. People have been complaining for years and yet little seems to have been done to resolve the issue, whilst cheap charter flights continue to operate throughout the night. In my opinion they should extend the runway to the east allowing bigger aircraft to operate fewer flights and introduce a night time curfew, whilst night time mail flights should be returned to the railway.

The town of Falmouth has been Threatened that if the turbines were shutdown and decommissioned, they would be Forced to repay Debts owing for the construction of the turbines anyway.

On the other hand, an Honourable Judge determined that the operation of the turbines is a Nuisance and had to be stopped.

The turbines were constructed on the premise they would NOT cause a nuisance: that turned out to be False.

Did those (including public institutions) who wished to collect on the debts owing for the nuisance turbines imply that one of the options available to the town of Falmouth was to continue Causing the nuisance? So Shameful.

Another study is beginning at Flinders University in SA funded by the NHMRC. Researchers are Professor Catcheside from the Institute for Sleep Health at the University and Mechanical engineer Dr Kirsty Hansen.
Hopefully this research will not be blown to the winds by those faithful to turbine giants but will shine yet another light on the truth.
The sooner those deaf to the truth about these things are forced to open their eyes, ears and minds to the reality of the pain and environmental destruction they have caused the better, so people suffering can be vindicated and the sooner more people and environments will be saved from destruction.
Lets hope when the time comes for more of these things to be ‘blown apart’ it doesn’t take as long as at Falmouth or be actioned.

Here are the words of Dr. William Hallstein M.D. in defence of the victims of this wind project:
“The human nervous system is the most sensitive instrument available to date for evaluating the impact of the Falmouth wind turbines on residents who live close to them. The ONLY experts in the discussion are the people who are sensing the sound, vibrations, pressure waves, etc emitted by the turbines. There is no one more “expert” than these people. No so called expert has either equipment nor information more accurate and sensitive than the affected residents’ nervous systems. NO instruments more sensitive than people have been invented! Others who claim to be experts are peddling smoke and mirrors in an effort to invalidate and discredit the affected residents. ”

Clusters of turbines, sited too close to peoples’ homes, exist in many different communities and have caused similar harm. The ‘order followers’ who have allowed this to happen must be stopped now. The psychopaths giving the orders must also be fully exposed.
What a relief for the residents at Falmouth and for all who have been watching this situation.
Is the harm that has been caused reversible?